Lead image for The real Agoa risk in the fine print.
Kenyan factories shipped 148 million pieces of apparel to the United States in 2025, a 27.6 percent jump in volume. Yet the money that came back fell, export earnings, dropped 4.1 percent to Sh58.1 billion, according to the Economic Survey 2026. Kenya's exporters are working harder and earning less for it, and the reason has little to do with tariffs.
That gap between volume and value is the real Agoa story for 2026, and it is a warning most boardrooms have not yet priced in.
The African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) expired on September 30, 2025. President Trump's retroactive extension, signed on February 3, 2026, restored duty-free treatment through December 31,2026, but only after a lapse that briefly pushed Kenya's trade-weighted tariff on apparel from roughly 10 percent toward 28 percent, and after South Africa's vehicle exports to the US fell by as much as 55–80 percent during comparable disruption.
Congress has since moved to lock in a longer runway: the House passed a three-year extension to 31st December 2028 in January 2026, and the Senate passed its own version in August 2026, though the bill still needs to be reconciled between the two chambers and signed by the President before it becomes law. A 25-year-old assumption that preferential US market access is simply available no longer holds, even with a longer extension now in prospect.
Most commentary has focused on whether tariffs return. That is the wrong question. The right one is whether the commercial arrangements built during a quarter-century of assumed access can survive a world where that assumption is gone.
Three exposures deserve attention. The first is pricing. Kenyan exporters in tea, coffee, horticulture, and apparel routinely sign fixed-price contracts months ahead of delivery, priced against duty-free access. Few contain tariff-adjustment or hardship clauses. When policy shifts, the exporter absorbs a cost nobody budgeted for.
The second is shipping terms. Duty-free access made customs exposure commercially irrelevant, so many Kenyan exporters shipped FOB or DAP, leaving import obligations with the US buyer.
A less certain Agoa environment gives US buyers reason to push for Delivered Duty Paid terms instead, shifting customs clearance, duties and border-delay costs onto the Kenyan exporter. What reads as a routine logistics clause in an old contract can become a material liability in a new one.